The Carolina Curator

Daniel Smith is an artist, author, curator, educator, and publisher (Canonymous Press). He was the Digital Production Editor & Metadata Coordinator for American Journeys and Project Director for the North Carolina History of Health Digital Collection. He has worked in the antiquarian book trade, as well as for such institutions as Cornell University, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the University of North Carolina. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa, with degrees in Biochemistry (B.S. with Honors), Russian (B.A.), Library & Information Science (M.A.), Comparative Literature (M.F.A.), and Law (J.D.), and studied abroad in Taiwan, Germany, Guatemala, and Russia. Research interests include the history of the book, information design, the digitization of historical materials, freedom of information, and international human rights. Smith is currently available for freelance curatorial, research, writing, editing, design, and publishing projects. [Email]

Other Image Collections

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

February 1, 2010, Durham, NC. Fine Books & Collections magazine, which targets collectors of rare and collectible books, will return to a regular print schedule in April 2010.

The magazine had suspended its bi-monthly publication schedule in November 2008, but published an edition in Fall 2009. Based on very positive results, the publishers will return the magazine to print on a quarterly basis. The annual subscription price will be $25.

In announcing its plans, the magazine said it would continue its monthly e-letter online and its very popular blog. According to associate publisher Kim Draper, the web site has grown tremendously in the past year, having just topped 50,000 monthly visitors.

"We don't hope to achieve as much readership in print, but we do think print has a certain charm and value that is impossible to obtain online," says Draper. "It remains a conundrum why collectors of print love reading online, but we are delighted to be able to serve both needs."

The online editor, Rebecca Rego Barry, will also serve as editor of the print edition. According to Barry, the content of the magazine will be a collection of some material used online as well as new features, columns, and resources that will not appear online. "We are intrigued with the idea of archiving some of our best online stories in a print format, but we will also be offering readers new content in each issue. It was a formula that worked very well for us with the edition we published last fall."

The magazine said that it plans some operational changes to make publishing more affordable, most notably that it will not process any subscription without a valid email address. According to Draper, "When we looked at our operation, we realized that contacting people via the postal service was just too expensive. We plan to handle all renewals and communication efforts via email, so there's really no point in having a subscriber with whom we can't communicate."

Writers in the upcoming print edition will include Nicholas Basbanes and Joel Silver, two stalwarts of the book collecting world. The magazine will continue its annual directory of booksellers started last fall that featured more than 700 book-related businesses, and it will add a feature called Biblio/360, an annual guide to classes, societies, fairs, and symposiums related to book collecting.